Field of the Invention
This application relates to an electronic picture book that advances reading by showing an image on a screen of a computer.
Description of the Related Technology
Electronic picture books that display contents of a picture book on a screen of a computer as images and advance reading are widely known. Such electronic picture books emulate picture books made from paper, and are designed such that any person familiar with picture books made from paper will quickly understand how to read them. More specifically, such electronic picture books are given functionality for turning pages in a similar manner to in picture books made from paper, and reading of the electronic picture book can be advanced as pages are turned.
There are also electronic picture books that utilize features of computers to provide animation functionality and interactivity functionality. In electronic picture books provided with animation functionality, some pictures are displayed as animations. In electronic picture books provided with interactivity functionality, some of the pictures, for example, move as an animation or emit a sound effect when an operation such as a mouse click is performed.
Such electronic picture books are explained in Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2010-39851), for example.
In recent years, tablet terminals that employ displays equipped with touch panels are becoming widespread. Such tablet terminals include functionality to cause scrolling by vertically stroking the touch panel by hand when viewing webpages or document files, such that the webpage or document moves vertically as if moved by the hand.
Although remarkably few in number, electronic picture books have appeared in which a display equipped with a touch panel is used to read while scrolling.
Examples of such electronic picture books include “Akaimaru-chan (Round RED)” by HONGO Inc. These electronic picture books invoke page delivery functionality for advancing to the next page when the touch panel is stroked by hand, and operate so as to align two pages side-by-side and slide the two pages as if the previous page and the next page are sequential pages. Accordingly, if the hand is taken away, movement automatically proceeds to the next page and then stops.
Up to now, electronic picture books have had a problem in that even though functionality has been achieved for scrolling by modifying a display range such that images appear to be moved by stroking the screen by hand, which is a particular feature of tablet terminals that employ a display equipped with a touch panel, to give an easily understood representation of the fact that pages are sequential, it has not been possible to achieve a special representation of this fact so as to greatly surprise the reader.
It is conceivable that a large reason for this is the lack of a program to produce an electronic picture book, or electronic data to represent an electronic picture book, capable of simple linking scrolling with a special representation of the electronic picture book, and the invention also aims to solve this problem.
Related art includes Japanese Application No. 2010-39851 and Japanese Patent No. 4563440.